The CoEs at HUD are entering phase two. Here’s what the contracts look like so far

It appears that the implementation phase for the Centers of Excellence at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is set to begin shortly.

But first, there are contracts to be awarded.

Three RFQs for phase two of the General Services Administration-run initiative have been posted on GitHub in recent days. These include one targeting the acquisition of “a cloud-based electronic records management (ERM) system to support multiple data sources, as well an intelligent data extraction (IDE) capability for the extraction of written material from paper forms,” another to help establish an “Office of Customer Experience,” and the final one to create an Office of the Chief Data Officer and “implement an overall data management strategy.”

The RFQs lay out discreet performance objectives for each contract as well as operating constraints (solutions must use agile development procedures, for example) and expectations for how the chosen contractor will collaborate with other CoE and HUD teams.

Under the customer experience (CX) contract, for example, the contractor is expected to “operationalize” an office of customer experience within HUD. Other tasks include working on prototype CX projects to improve the agency’s customer experience capabilities and training HUD employees in CX best practices. The work aligns with getting the housing agency into compliance with the performance goals of Office of Management and Budget Circular A-11.

Responses to the CX RFQ are due Oct. 4. Responses to the other two are due Oct. 9. Each contract has a 12 month period of performance, with two additional 12 month option periods available.

There are three other procurements that had RFIs but for which RFQs haven’t yet been posted — one for contact center work, one for data visualization and one for advanced data analytics.

The IT modernization CoE project chose HUD for its second installation in September 2018. Since then, the group has also entered into partnerships with the Office of Personnel Management, Consumer Product Safety Commission and Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) at the Department of Defense.